Belated and barmy christmas cards

It’s probably a little late to be sending out your Christmas cards (definitely a little late), but I thought I’d share some of the best and worst that I’ve found this year. 

Starting out with a few charming owl cards, keeping it simple and sweet. 

Pretty, wintery prints

Furry festive friends

This charming New York scene

And now for the not-so-charming

Ranging from the strange and confusingly inappropriate.

No, um…what?

To extreme, un-festive, judgementalism. Nothing says Christmas like slut-shaming eh.

But to end of a more charming note, be sure to look on the bright side. 

Sunday bakes – Boozy choux buns

I’m starting to get a little bored of my usual recipes so today I tried something new, I made choux pastry for the first time. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be, but it did make my arm ache a little. To make the buns a little more festive I added some cognac to the crème patissiere and made an orange chocolate sauce, you can’t have Christmas without a chocolate orange. 

 

Ingredients

Pastry

200ml cold water

4tsp caster sugar

3oz margarine

4oz plain flour

3 beaten eggs

Crème Patissiere

500ml full fat milk

1 vanilla pod

6 egg yolks

4.5oz caster sugar

2oz plain flour

6tbsp cognac

Chocolate sauce

200 grams dark chocolate

Zest of 2 oranges

150ml double cream

Method

Pastry

Heat the oven to 200 and put a small roasting tray in the bottom.

Put the water, sugar and butter into a large saucepan and heat until the butter melts. Turn up the heat and add the flour in one go, mix vigorously until the pastry is fully combined and is coming away from the sides of the saucepan. Put the mixture into a bowl and leave to cool for ten minutes before mixing in the beaten egg a little at a time. The mixture should be dropping consistency.

Pipe the mixture in balls onto a sheet of baking paper before smoothing the top of the balls with a wet finger.

As you are putting the baking tray in the oven take a cup of water and pour it into the roasting tray. Close the oven door quickly because the steam will help the buns to rise.

Leave for 25 minutes or until the buns are golden brown and then leave them to cool on a cooling rack. 

Crème Patissiere

In a large saucepan heat the milk with the split vanilla pod. Whisk up the sugar, flour and eggs in a large bowl. Take out the vanilla pod and pour the milk into the bowl a little at a time, mixing thoroughly each time. Once combined pour the mixture back in to the saucepan and heat, stir the mixture constantly while it thickens so avoid lumps and then remove from the heat. Leave the mixture to cool before adding the cognac.

Cut a small hole in the side of each bun and pipe the Crème patissiere into them. 

Orange chocolate sauce

Break up the chocolate into a glass bowl and add the grated zest, heat over a pan full of hot water until the chocolate has melted. Heat the cream in a small pan gently and then add to the chocolate little by little. If the mixture splits slightly when you are doing this just add a bit of hot water and mix vigorously and it will eventually come back together.

Spoon the chocolate sauce over the buns and serve warm or cold.

Sunday bakes - Cinnamon bread cookies

This recipe is a hash up of a couple of things that I tasted and saw. The basic cookie recipe is one for stained-glass cookies, but after tasting the wonderful cinnamon biscuits from the Cinnamon Tree Bakery. In Borough market they sell their marvellous elephant-embossed cinnamon biscuits, so I decided to play around to see if I could make an approximation of them. 

Ingredients

12 oz flour

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ginger

3 tsp cinnamon

3.5oz margarine

6oz brown sugar

1 free-range egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

Method

Cream the margarine and sugar together before adding the spices, salt and syrup. Once thoroughly mixed add the egg and then the flour. The mixture will be fairly dry so you can roll it out and cut it into shapes. Much like gingerbread it will hold its shape while baking so I think you could easily use this to make a gingerbread house, if you prefer cinnamon to ginger.

The bakers at the cinnamon tree bakery emboss the biscuits with a white print of an elephant, but I have yet to work out how they do this, so instead I used a cookie cutter to imprint the shape of a snowflake, you could also ice them. 

Coniferous Christmas

Christmas is so pricey and a lot of it is unnecessary, going against the point of the holiday. When I first moved out I get a little over-excited and went all out for Christmas, but over the years it has worn a bit thin. Getting home from work and balancing on a foot stool in a pencil skirt to put up a million lights is a little dangerous for someone as coordination-challenged as I am. These days I prefer to opt for more low-key decorations. This particular one I made using a hurricane lamp, some conifer branches I picked up on my walk home and some ribbon that I used to wrap last year’s presents with. Add a candle and it gives a nice seasonal glow.